"the only investigative journalist left in this Country who has the balls to ask the big questions"

So you've never watching the show.

It's always been ENTERTAINMENT, with the so-called hard-hitting stuff being no more than Fair Go style antics.

Form your own opinion instead of parroting John Key's excuse for the FACT that he's been arse f**ked by Campbell a wee bit, also been majorly arse f**ked on the BBC's HardLine program where he was made a fool of too, he's a pushover when it's shoved up his arse and not one of the better politicians we've seen in the leadership role for ages. Once the grace period and the smarmy answers wore off he can't handle he hard s**t.

The woman who put Gloriavale Christian Community guru Hopeful Christian in prison for indecent assault in the 1980s has had her name suppression lifted so she can tell her story on national television.

She will appear on the TV One show Sunday this weekend.

In previews for the show, the woman says there will be "no more hiding in shadows".

"[Hopeful] has got to be stopped."

Mr Christian, previously Neville Cooper, faced three charges of indecent assault from January 1984 relating to a 19-year-old member of the Christian community when it was based at Cust, in North Canterbury. The woman testified that she was penetrated with a wooden object.

Mr Christian said she was given the object and encouraged to use it on herself as "therapy".

In 1996, he failed to have his five-year jail sentence for indecent assault reduced. He was released that November.

The move from Cust to Lake Haupiri, inland from Nelson Creek, started in 1991 and was accompanied by a name change to the Gloriavale Christian Community.

Meanwhile, a request under the Official Information Act seems to confirm Gloriavale members do not receive social security benefits, despite claims by Campbell Live to the contrary.

The Greymouth Star asked how many people in the Haupiri area were receiving some form of benefit, after some ex-members suggested they may be.

The Ministry of Social Development said yesterday it could not reveal how many people were collecting a benefit because the numbers were too small, at less than five.

The Gloriavale website says members put their money in non-interest bearing bank accounts, while a booklet given out at the biennial Gloriavale concerts says: "We do not take welfare benefits, borrow money, or invest money on interest".

The Department of Internal Affairs confirmed late last week it was investigating Gloriavale's charity status.

The community owns assets of $36.6 million, including a dairy farm, deer enterprise and an aircraft repair firm - all operated from its reclusive base at Lake Haupiri.

The tax-exempt charity operating as the Christian Church Community Trust is run by four church leaders and headed by Hopeful Christian, who is referred to in documents as the"Overseeing Shepherd".

A secret meeting between a top TVNZ reporter and a TV3 boss became awkward when the journalist's boss walked in.

Political reporter Heather du Plessis-Allan recently met TV3 head of news Mark Jennings. It is understood TV3 wanted to talk to her about becoming a co-host for the station's new current affairs programme, set to replace the recently axed Campbell Live in the 7pm slot.

A source told the Weekend Herald du Plessis-Allan and Jennings had decided to meet in Wellington at the Bolton Hotel - an establishment many TVNZ staffers stay at regularly. The booking was made in the name of TVNZ, apparently to avoid suspicion.

However, unknown to the pair, TVNZ's head of news gathering, Phil O'Sullivan, was checking in to the hotel that day too.

A hotel staffer inadvertently gave the game away when Mr O'Sullivan was given access to the room booked under "TVNZ" - it is understood he opened the door to find the pair in secret talks.

Yesterday, du Plessis-Allan declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for MediaWorks, TV3's parent company.

But TVNZ's head of news and current affairs, John Gillespie, wasn't surprised by the meeting. "We completely understand why MediaWorks are targeting our people - we think they're the best in the business too."

Campbell Live, as well as its host John Campbell, bowed out just over three weeks ago. The prime-time slot is currently being filled by cooking show Come Dine With Me NZ.

MediaWorks has not yet revealed who will take the reins for the new 7pm programme, but du Plessis-Allan is among the names - including Duncan Garner, Alison Mau and Paul Henry - that media commentators have suggested are in the running to co-host the show.

Every time someone mentions TV 3 viewing. I just say "I don't watch TV 3 I'm boycotting it, with great pleasure too. Today I watched cone dine with me on TV 1 not because I enjoy the program but just because it is not on TV 3

Logged

Obi Wan Kanobi said. "I have never seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy." Little did Obi Wan realize he was describing the National party.

Just heard him, Duncan and Heather du Plessis-Allan, Duncan said he's going to stay on the drive show. I guess Duncan will be the next to be bullied by the JC lovers, they've been targeting Guy Williams for only doing the voice over on Come Dine With Me

It's almost exactly three months since the New Zealand Herald's 'Diary' columnist Rachel Glucina announced in a tweet that she had been "headhunted" by Mediaworks "for a joint venture partnership to create, run and co-own a new digital entertainment platform."

Many of her former Herald colleagues believed she had, at best, jumped before she'd been pushed, and that the final straw had been not her unethical treatment of waitress Amanda Bailey but her ludicrous "conifers" column. The belief was that she was due to be dispensed with in a reshuffle after the departure of editor-in-chief Tim Murphy.

Whatever the case, the news was not welcome at all amongst Mediaworks journalists. As Simon Day describes it in the Sunday Star Times today:

Morale in the newsroom was already low. It was less than a month since John Campbell had resigned. The hiring of Glucina, the infamous gossip columnist who had attacked so many of TV3's presenters and journalists during her time at the New Zealand Herald, was the tipping point for an anxious and now enraged newsroom.

The staff were mutinous. Their protests forced head of news Mark Jennings to call an emergency newsroom meeting. In a hostile session TV3's journalists demanded to know how the appointment could have happened. Jennings promised Glucina would never set foot in the newsroom.

Some time after that, Mediaworks journalists received a group email announcing that:

Rachel Glucina is going to be leading a small but perfectly formed team to dominate entertainment news in New Zealand and beyond. This is your opportunity to be there from the beginning and help shape our digital entertainment news into the phenomenon it will undoubtedly become.

We need your energy, your drive and your skills to deliver on some bold plans.

Being sought were a news editor responsible for ensuring that "news stories have an emphasis on quality, accuracy, accessibility, best Web practices, and search engine optimisation (SEO)"; an online editor ("You will write, file, edit and promote a range of digital content on the platforms, including website, tablet, mobile app, social media and others, that will build the online presence for this major technology site"); and a social media editor "experienced in creating, curating and promoting compelling creative social content, generating web traffic, and expanding brand visibility and conversation."

The site, Scout, launches tomorrow (or today, if you're reading this on Monday), with Francis Cook, a former gallery reporter with Scoop, signed on as news editor and Patrick Gower and Duncan Garner as contributors. What Glucina will do day-to-day isn't clear.

Great start Rachel, what a scoop, Mike Hosking vacuuming his Ferrari as your lead story

Annnnnnnd, her new workmates think it's a hoot too....

Quote

MediaWorks staff appear in open revolt at their company's new gossip website, Scout, which launched this morning with a "scoop" about Mike Hosking hoovering his Ferrari with a hand-held dustbuster on Auckland's Remuera Road.

The website, edited by former New Zealand Herald gossip columnist Rachel Glucina, went online on Monday morning ahead of a launch party at Auckland restaurant/bar Wine Chambers on Monday night. But it seems some staff from within Glucina's own organisation won't be celebrating.

Newsreader Hilary Barry was first into the fray, mocking the Hosking story with a photo of herself vacuuming her own car, with the hashtag #stalkingisnotok

TV3 reporter David Farrier retweeted Barry's tweet and another mocking one, from TV3's own late-night news show, Newsworthy (which he fronts with Samantha Hayes), which read: "Exclusive: David Farrier Sits at Desk: http://tinyurl.com/DaveAtDesk".

The tweet links to a story on Newsworthy's site which consists of three increasingly zoomed in photos of a dazed Farrier.

He then followed up with tweets saying he would not be working for Scout, and if they doorstopped him, he would set his parrot Keith on them.

Comedian Eli Mathewson and media commentator Russell Brown were among others to take an early crack at the site on Twitter.

Scout, said to be a local take on E! meets TMZ, has promised sex, scandal and gossip since its announcement. Beyond the Hosking car expose, it had stories on World Cup WAGS and reality TV stars.

There's also what looks to be a regular segment called Mile high diaries, in which unnamed writers share their stories about joining the "mile high club".

In some clear cross-promotion for other MediaWorks products, "New Zealand's most fearless broadcaster", Duncan Garner (from MediaWorks' Story) takes on a high-wire challenge despite being scared of heights; socialite – and one of Glucina's well-known besties – Gilda Kirkpatrick has written a children's book; MediaWorks' Sharyn Casey teaches you how to stalk people in the supermarket.